


And Get Your "Kix" For Free

by infinitecompositions



Series: To Pluck the Strings of Destiny [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate POV, Clones, Gen, chapter 27 of main work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29697600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitecompositions/pseuds/infinitecompositions
Summary: The alternate POV promised for Chapter 27 ofWe Brothers, We Sisters, We Vod'e Few. Reading the original is recommended, but not necessarily required.CT-6116 has a lot to worry about. It takes some time to find others he can lean on.
Relationships: CT-6116 | Kix & CT-7567 | Rex
Series: To Pluck the Strings of Destiny [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2158455
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	And Get Your "Kix" For Free

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure how I feel about this side story, but I did get it written for all that it was a rough ride to get it done with everything due this week. I hope you enjoy!

CT-6116 knows that clones don’t get names. They’re clones. They’re the same face copied onto a thousand different bodies, and even those bodies are largely copied from the prime.

He knows the Alphas got the most of any personality, at least that’s what the scientists say. The scientists don’t say much, but sometimes they’ll answer 6116’s questions. The medical ones, especially. The Kaminii are so proud to have wiped out the Fett aggression from the CCs, and even more from the CTs. They boast about it and they talk about how they are perfecting the army commissioned for the Republic. Commissioned for the Jedi.

CT-6116 doesn’t necessarily _get along_ with his batchmates. They’re all reckless, and he has to keep up with them. His trainers have talked about slating him into medic training and “making something of at least one of that batch”.

He doesn’t like the sound of that. Sure, medical training isn't wasted on ones expected to wash out, but the trainers can only recommend him. The Kaminii make the final decisions for medical, and if they decide he doesn't make the cut he isn't sure that his chances of being decommissioned won't go up. Beyond that, sure. He and his batchmates don't get along great. But if the trainers are talking about him like he's the only one with some hope of becoming something, then he knows the reality of decommissioning is going to be hitting far sooner than anyone had thought. 

His pod is on the end. Closest to the door, and he has taken advantage of that before in order to sneak out at night and walk. To think, when he can't sleep. There is a room where 6116 can watch the roiling ocean and the storms from big, wide windows. There is something terrifying and beautiful about the destructive force on display out that window. 

He goes out of his way to avoid getting sent out for laps in the rain. He heard one of the CCs tell a story about a cadet that got sent out when he was about 6116’s size and he got blown off the platform. While he isn’t sure he believes it, he doesn’t want to tempt fate.

Tonight is one of those nights. ’12 and ’15 got in another fight. They’re housed, for now, in batches of ten, and he somehow got stuck with the rowdy batch that never quite got the hang of when to shut up.

He doesn’t want them decommissioned, but he doesn’t know what to do with them. How are they supposed to serve together if all they do is fight?

He knows that within the year two will have been failed out of the program. He thought they had more time, that they could prepare, but the way the trainers are talking it might not even be the full year.

At least two, he should say. He wishes he had the hardline faith in himself that ’12 has, or the surety of ’15, but he knows he has weaknesses. That the trainers see something in him is almost a relief, if only because it buys him the time needed to improve.

He leans back on the wall. The storms are raging outside Kamino, a force so powerful even the Kaminii cannot control it. The Mandalorian trainers are talking about a new one being brought in, about how Fett is pushing for another Clan from the Haat'Ade to contribute but they haven’t yet. They think 6116 doesn’t hear them, not like they notice the other clones listening. 6116 is good at that, he thinks. He’s good at going unnoticed when he isn’t needed. Maybe that’s why they want him to be a medic – when he’s needed he is very good at making sure they see him.

Medics need to get attention and hold it. More than that, they need to command respect. He is young yet, he knows, but how could they get that out of him in the next eight years? The kind of presence the Alphas have? That the trainers have?

He nods off without even realizing it, and he feels so cold suddenly. There is a man in a long cloak and with short, red hair. He is young, if Kix isn't mistaken, for a nat-born male. But he is so much older than 6116, and he has a presence like the trainers. He knows himself, at least parts of himself.

6116 could say anything, but something compels him. It whispers in his ear, caresses his chin, then takes his voice.

“Help us.”

“Where are you?”

The only answer that feels right is the honest one – “In the rain.”

He is, in a way, in the rain. This is the room where he watches the rain, at least. He would rather not be blown away by the storm.

“What do you need?”

6116 doesn’t know, he says as much. He wants… something. He wants what other batches have, certainly. That camaraderie that they will fight against anything that threatens them. That the only acceptable threat is one from within, because those are usually meant for fun.

His batch isn’t like that.

The man lets 6116 hold his hand and its big and warm and it feels so safe. It feels like failure isn’t as big a problem as he thought, like things might be okay. But he is still honest with the man. He is not allowed to want. He is given what he needs.

He does not say that he is a soldier. That good soldiers make do.

The man asks his name, like 6116 isn’t just a soldier. He plays along when 6116 offers his designation, but something squirms. It squirms and it twists and it’s cold until he offers the name _Six_ up. 6116 hates it, but the second option… It feels right. Even the weird feeling he’s had since he fell asleep says so.

They keep walking until the same feeling tells “Kicks” to stop. Tells him that his time here is over.

“I have to wake up now.”

He has to wake up. He doesn’t want to. The red-haired man is kind and is almost a reprieve from the monotony of training day in and day out. Of being one of millions of the same face.

(Not the same person. He knows they are not the same person because even all coming from Jango Fett they all clash so much, at least the ones his age do. The older ones… he’s seen some units that work seamlessly, and it is awe-inspring.)

Kicks. When he wakes up he scowls at it. Not quite right.

He has an opened note on a datapad. He plays around with the writing of it until finally he starts seeing something in it.

He cuts three letters and switches it up. The man had originally wanted to name him Six… Maybe _he_ was on to something, too.

Whoever he was, _Kix_ hopes they serve together, when the Clones are sent to the Jedi. He hopes that they get to know one another better.

He doesn’t tell his batchmates about the name. But he hears a rumor that one of the mutated clones in another batch close to his picked a name and shouted at the instructors to _karking use it, shabuire._ Some Mando’a was tolerated by the scientists, given their trainers, but Kix worries the other will be decommissioned if he shows too much more personality.

He meets him. 7567 tells him his name is Rex. Kix shares his, and later shows him his rain room. Rex doesn’t understand why, but he still sits in there with Kix some nights.

It is the start of something, that dream. That name. Rex and he are… They’re alike in many ways and different in others. Kix likes it – his first friend.

The trainers use the name. They humor Rex, the whispers say.

Kix thinks they might just respect him, a bit. At least a few of them. When Kix lets his own name slip one day, he sees a glint in the eye of the trainer who hears it. There are only two anymore who use his designation, who don’t call him by name.

’12 fails out within a few weeks. His batch gets quiet. None of them ask about him sneaking off so much more. The Kaminii make barely a second note of it in their files, except that the stealth training seems to be paying off more for him than the others in his batch.

Kix has dreams of the red-haired man. Glimpses of him, but he doesn’t know how to explain them. He doesn’t know what to say to get help for it without being decommissioned for being too far beyond standard. But he dreams. Glimpses of him with a human woman talking. With a Kiffar man and a human boy. He doesn’t know if these are imagined – but how many people has he really seen, that he could conjure up that many faces in his mind? – but he knows that they’re their own form of comfort. An escape of sorts, for all he knows he should ask about them.

Only when ’12 is decommissioned they become darker dreams. No longer does he dream of the man and the people around him. Does he dream of a comfort and a kindness. He dreams of running from the Kaminii. Of death and fear. The Kaminii have left a hole in his batch. Have left him as one of the survivors of a batch. ’12 was going to fail out, they all knew it when the trainers started distancing themselves from him. When they stopped helping him correct and just let him screw up. 

He didn’t expect it to hit him so hard. To sting so much or last so long in his head, the echo of knowing that ’12 wouldn’t be around to cause trouble or get in arguments anymore. To walk to class with, or see in the mess hall.

Shortly after ’12 is decommissioned, Kix is switched to the medic track. The dreams abate – he is useful, he has a purpose and the Kaminii would not bother investing any of this into him if they did not think it would pay off – but they never fully leave. How can they when he could still screw this up, could still end up being useless in some other way? He trains with what spare time he can scrounge up so that he doesn’t have to face that reality. He doesn’t know what to do to make sure he is always useful, even beyond being a medic, but he knows he must find _something_. Something to make him stand out, to make him _a good investment._

Rex says it’s good, that Kix got switched. That it means that Rex will have to watch his back less, because come hell or high-water Rex is going to find a way to serve with Kix. If Kix is the medic, they’ll have to keep him behind the main lines, because they’ll need him. He’ll be useful and then on the battlefield he’ll be kept out of the worst of the fighting.

Kix scowls. Like he would leave the fighting behind entirely, when Rex will be right out there in the thick of it. He has to find a way to be both a fighter and a support. He might drive himself insane if he doesn’t. Just the thought has his heart racing and head pounding with a fury. He needs to distinguish himself, to be exceptional, and he needs to be able to fight. He has the start of something, but he doesn’t know where to go with it. He’s still _young_ , for all it chafes at him and all he is constantly feeling growing pains, aging twice as fast as nat-borns.

He and Rex talk about what will happen in the future. They talk about it a lot – about campaigns, about being in the war that they know they’re being built for. Trained for. Honed for. It might be bearable, Kix thinks, if he has Rex by his side. Maybe a few others, if he can make some more friends. There is no guarantee, but Rex started something in the CTs – he started the whispering of names and the silent assertion even for all the Kaminii overlook it. _We are here. We are people. We have a self._

He and Rex are friends. And Rex has bent the rules Kix knew about the world once. He talks with the confidence of a man that knows he can do it again, instead of a boy speaking empty promises to another in a crowded mess.

“We’re friends. And I know a few CCs – they say that friends have to stick together.”

They’re both still young, and the CCs are old enough to _know_. Because that’s what CCs do.

Or, that’s what Kix thought CCs did, until he saw one with a slightly crazed look in his eye as he lied straight through his teeth with the confidence of someone who believed every word they said even while his face betrayed him.

Kix wonders what possessed him to try it. The Kaminii, though, shock Kix more. They _let him get away with it._ They say he must “work on his deception”, but that it was an admirable attempt.

When Kix makes a shebs of himself on purpose once, in front of the Kaminii, even, he finds that they take to it well. That it’s, given the parameters, a desirable outburst. It shows _tenacity_ and _wherewithal_ and _confidence_.

Confidence, he thinks, is a strange thing. He did not feel a shred of it, but he had pretended he did.

And maybe that’s the key to all of it. Maybe, just maybe, confidence will come because he forces himself to be that way. Because he, like Rex, looks the world in the eye and prepares for a fight.

**Author's Note:**

> So this actually has very little to do with the interaction between Obi-Wan and Kix, but it does influence some of Kix' decision making so I figured I would keep it how it is. I hope you guys enjoyed it! 
> 
> Notes:   
> 1\. Kix is still very young, even for a clone. When I wrote this, it was set to start right around when he is about 3 or 4 years, therefore 6-8 in the nat-born equivalent. He is young enough he doesn't quite realize that the unity in older units is because they're older, because they've had time to develop that. Yes, I know I'm implying the Kaminoans would start pulling and decommissioning rather early, but given they are (in their minds) trying to provide a "product" I imagine their "quality control" would be very strict. By the end, he's somewhere around 5-6 in the Clone years.  
> 2\. Rex is maybe a year older than Kix, and he still has to learn to watch his mouth and, in Kix' words, "when to shut up". I figure he would have performance scores to make up for the mouthiness given they know they can train that out with time.   
> 3\. The trainers, given what we know of at least a few of them, likely had to do mental distancing when dealing with the clones that were going to be decommissioned. It would be too much to be close to a clone they knew was going to be decommissioned. Instead, use the numbers unless you know they have a solid chance, and stop helping them and start distancing yourself from them if you know they're up for decommissioning.


End file.
